[Vision2020] Collaborative ignores due process

[Tom Hansen]

Courtesy of today's (April 2, 2013) Moscow-Pullman Daily News with a note of appreciation to Jeanne McHale.

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Collaborative ignores due process
Despite several well-written letters explaining the basis for our objection to the Clearwater Basin Collaborative, Lee Rozen, writing for the editorial board, took another swing at the Friends of the Clearwater, and other environmental groups, in a recent editorial.
He speculated that reluctance to participate in this extra-legal process stems from considering collaboration with the Forest Service to be "distasteful." Rozen should know there is quite a bit of cooperation between FOC and USFS, for example to monitor wilderness, to keep placer mines off the North Fork of the Clearwater and to help guide Forest Service response to the discovery of cultural artifacts.
What is distasteful is the effort by Sen. Mike Crapo, who convened the collaborative, to permit local interests, heavily weighted by the timber industry and off-road vehicle users, to make decisions about lands that belong to all Americans.
Collaborative efforts such as the CBC exist to make end-runs around the due process of public involvement within the National Environmental Policy Act, and there are many examples in which efforts of this type lead to public land giveaways.
The CBC may indeed be playing into the hands of Boise Republicans as they hatch treasonous plans to steal public lands from U.S. citizens and hand them over to their friends in the timber industry. That's pretty distasteful.
Jeanne McHale
Moscow

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Seeya round town, Moscow, because . . .

"Moscow Cares" (the most fun you can have with your pants on)
http://www.MoscowCares.com
  
Tom Hansen
Moscow, Idaho

"There's room at the top they are telling you still 
But first you must learn how to smile as you kill 
If you want to be like the folks on the hill."

- John Lennon
 
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